


Cormac McLaggen and the Island of the Inferi

by AoifeMoran



Series: The Cormac McLaggen Redemption Arc [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Just don't ask honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 15:05:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18780700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AoifeMoran/pseuds/AoifeMoran
Summary: Cormac had always been perhaps a bit too fond of the Indiana Jones franchise.Which was probably how he found himself here, in his current predicament.The decaying reindeer looked at Cormac with an expression that had no place on the face, er, skull, of a herbivorous animal. Cormac looked at the decaying reindeer, and then he began to run.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat related to my "Abundance of Slytherins" series but can also be read as a standalone.
> 
> The beginning of a series of stories in what I jokingly call the "Cormac McLaggen Redemption Arc". Please don't expect regular updates, I can't promise anything. The muse comes and goes.

“Y’know, you could help a bit, with this whole rowing thing.” 

“I beg your pardon?” The words were spoken in a frostily polite tone of voice, but the speaker’s Russian accent made the innocent phrase sound like a pointed insult.

“The rowing,” he repeated, but slower this time. Maybe she simply hadn’t understood, he reasoned, since her English wasn’t the best. The subtle Russian accent was rather sexy, though... “You could help.”

“Do not speak to me like to an idiot,” the row-boat’s second occupant ordered, in a tone that was impossibly colder. “Just because I am Russian doesn’t mean I don’t understand you, Englishman.”

Cormac licked his lips and smirked. “Damn, Lisa, I love an assertive woman like you,” he told his companion, letting his eyes roam over what little of her body wasn’t concealed by her long fur coat. He opened his mouth to say something else, but before he could, she had whipped out her wand and hexed him with something that felt like he’d been struck by a small lightning bolt. “Fuckin’ hell, Lisa!” he shouted, and she hit him with the hex again.

“My name is Vasilisa Bessmertnaya, not Lisa, and not anything else. You will speak to me with respect, or you will never speak again,” she hissed, leaning towards him from her seat in the prow of the rowboat. Her elm wand was kept trained directly at Cormac’s neck, and it was clear from her expression she had no problem whatsoever making good on her threat. “You are here because my family has hired you to perform for us a service, and you are disposable and replaceable. Do not forget.”

“But I can’t even pronounce your name, what do you expect me to do?” Cormac whinged, and promptly yelped again when the nonverbally cast hex hit him again.

“Be silent,” Vasilisa sneered, “and keep rowing.”

“Yes, your majesty,” he huffed under his breath. “I’m rowing, I’m rowing!” he added, grabbing the oars before he could be hexed again.

“Row faster. At this rate we should be at the island within an hour. I have no desire to spend this much time alone in a boat with you.”

Cormac pretended to ignore her insult, although he did speed up his pace. “I still don’t get why we can’t just charm the boat to carry us across. Why do we have to do it the muggle way? I mean I know you said the bay is cursed but that’s not a really specific answer.”

“Do you know what an Inferius is, Englishman?” Vasilisa asked. The word ‘Englishman’ sounded like an insult when she said it. 

“I’ve fought more than a few Inferi in my career and I’m still here,” Cormac boasted.

“The island and the bay are filled with Inferi. Salt water conducts magic. One brush of magic in the water and the Inferi are upon us, and we are lost.”

“But hexing me while we’re in the boat is fine?” he drawled, raising an eyebrow.

“I never miss a mark when casting,” Vasilisa informed him. “The only danger we are in is if you are enough of an idiot to capsize us.”

“Wait but hang on, you said the island is filled with Inferi too. How do you expect us to survive those?” It was, he felt, a fair question to ask. He was getting paid to undo an enchantment on the island, but he wasn’t about to die for a few thousand galleons, after all.

“My family has a spell that will allow you to go unnoticed. I will cast it on you.”

“You’re not casting it on yourself?”

“So long as the enchantment holds, no one of the Bessmertniy line, or any pureblood witch or wizard, may step foot on the island, or even see it,” she explained. “My father was the first in our family to put pragmatism ahead of purity. Unfortunately, you were the only half-blood cursebreaker willing to take the job. Frankly, I doubt you will succeed.”

“Well thanks for that vote of confidence, really,” Cormac drawled. “I mean, how hard can it be? All I have to do is get into the castle and destroy whatever the spell’s anchored to.”

“It will not be nearly as simple as that. The enchantment was laid by Ivan Tsarevich himself.”

“Who?”

“You come to Russia to hunt for lost artefacts and break curses and you do not bother to learn even the smallest hints of our history?” Vasilisa fixed Cormac with a bewildered look.

“I mean, it’s worked for me in every other country I’ve been to so far…” Cormac ran a hand through his hair and shrugged. “I guess I’m just that good.”

Vasilisa rolled her eyes. “It is good you are a lucky fool,” she said finally, letting out a deep breath. “It may be the only thing that saves you here.”

“You sound like you think I’m gonna die. How bad could it be, seriously? It’s just a stupid enchantment on a bloody castle… Though this Ivan guy sounds pretty cool, usually it’s you purebloods casting spells that stop those of us who aren’t ‘good enough’ from entering,” he told her, putting his hands back on the oars after removing them for a moment to make air quotes.

“I suppose you would think that,” Vasilisa sniffed. “Ivan Tsarevich was the third son of a muggle Tsar and his wife, the veela Nastasya of the Golden Braid. He was the only wizard, so his mother sent him away so his brothers would not kill him out of jealousy.  
He learned magic during his travels, and fell in love with the enchantress Marya Morevna. She was the eldest daughter of my ancestor Koschei, who earned the name ‘Bessmertniy’ because he was a skilled necromancer.”

“That explains the inferi, I suppose,” McLaggen muttered under his breath. “What, uh, what exactly does your last name mean?”

“Metaphorically? ‘Immortal.’ But a better translation would be ‘Deathless,’” his companion answered. “May I continue without further rude interruptions?”

McLaggen rolled his eyes but nodded, and Vasilisa continued to speak.

“Koschei forbade Marya to marry Ivan since he did not come from a purely wizarding heritage but the two married in secret. When Koschei found out, he imprisoned Marya in a tower on this very island, but Ivan came to her as a bird. They managed to keep these visits secret until the two realized that Marya was with child and began to think of a way for Marya to escape the tower and its enchantments.  
They learned that only Koschei’s death would end the enchantment on the tower if he did not lift it himself, so Marya told Ivan where her father’s magic sword - the only weapon which could harm him - was hidden and how Koschei might be killed. When her father learned of her betrayal, he killed her in his rage and then went out to meet Ivan and slay him also.  
They fought and Ivan overpowered him, but with his dying breath Koschei cast a spell to kill all the life on the island and resurrect them as Inferi.”

“Wait, he killed his own daughter?” Cormac asked, shocked. “I mean I’ve met some people who are obsessed with blood purity, but most wouldn’t go so far as to kill their own family…”

“It was a different time,” she shrugged. Cormac shot her a baffled look, not understanding how someone could be so casual about people killing their own children. “Ivan was able to protect himself but in his grief at Marya’s death, enchanted the island so that Marya’s brothers would not be able to step foot on the island and bury their father properly, and then he left, carrying Marya’s remains with him.”

“So you’re telling me it’s taken your family four hundred years to get the blood purity stick out of your asses and hire a half-blood to break the enchantment so you can bury a fucking body?” Honestly, rich people made no sense. It was like all the money made their brains stop working, Cormac thought to himself. But as long as they were paying him money he could use to buy alcohol, did it really matter?

Vasilisa rolled her eyes at him. “It is not about the body. The island was the hereditary seat of our power. The political climate these days… Father wants to restore the castle to its former glory, so if the worst should come to pass, we will have a fortified position to defend ourselves from. Before, it was like boasting, saying, we are so strong we do not need Buyan Castle to protect us. But now, the balance of power has shifted and we must shift with it.” For the briefest of moments a worried look crossed her face, but then the boat hit the dock and she was all business once again. “I will stay here with the boat. You have seven hours to find the enchantment’s anchor and come back. If you are not back in seven hours I will assume you are dead, and leave.”

“Seven hours? That’s nothing! That’s absolutely unfair! You haven’t even told me where Ivan’s enchantment is anchored, how d’you expect me to find it and break it in seven hours?”

“Mister McLaggen. If it has escaped your notice, we are in Russia. On an island in the Barentz Sea. If you are not finished within seven hours, it will be night, and no matter how strong a wizard you are, you will die of the cold. Or the Inferi.”

“How many Inferi can there be here?” The most he’d seen in one place was in the tomb of a Dark Lord in South America, where 50 followers had allowed themselves to be sacrificed and turned into Inferi in order to guard their lord’s tomb eternally.

“It is said that the island had a farming village with three hundred people, and a reindeer herd of one thousand reindeer that were to have been Marya’s dowry,” Vasilisa told him calmly. “Hold still a moment, I am casting the charm that will prevent them from seeing you as anything but another Inferius.” 

She made several motions with her wand and spoke several words in a language McLaggen didn’t understand. For a moment he went entirely blind and could see nothing but darkness around him, and then his vision cleared slightly and he could see again, but only in shades of grey. 

“What in all hells did you do to me, you blasted bitch?” Cormac shouted, wand out and pointed at Vasilisa even as he took a step backwards onto the dock to assume a more stable duelling stance.

“I will not tolerate this sort of language directed towards myself, Englishman,” Vasilisa sneered. “The spell to mask your presence to Inferi is a necromantic spell, and for the temporary disguise one must temporarily pass behind the veil between worlds. If you return I shall lift the spell. If you do not, you will pass beyond the veil and such things will be beyond your concern.” Cormac opened his mouth as if to speak but Vasilisa reached into her cloak’s pocket and pulled out an hourglass, turning it over as she said, in a clear dismissal, “Your time has started, Englishman. Don’t waste these few hours of daylight.”

***

“Don’t waste these few hours of daylight, Englishman,” Cormac muttered angrily to himself in an approximation of Vasilisa’s voice and accent. “We will arrive on the island close to the castle and the site of the battle, Englishman,” he continued in the same tone, climbing up winding steps painstakingly chiseled into the face of the cliff. The steps had started by the dock, true, but he felt that Vasilisa had deliberately misled him as to the distance involved. 

It seemed that no matter how many steps he climbed, the castle on the cliff remained the same distance away, and if he were judging by his watch he had already been climbing for an hour and a half. It was high time, he felt, to sit down and take a break, and consider whether this was even worth it. 

A casual glance downwards at the steps he had already climbed made him pause, and look again to confirm that it wasn’t just a trick of his odd, grey vision. He could see the ocean, the waves crashing upon a gravel beach, and the first steps down by the shore, but the dock and the small rowboat with Vasilisa in it were not where he had left them. In fact, they were nowhere to be seen.

“An enchantment, is it?” Cormac growled, focusing his magic as he slashed his wand downwards, tearing away the illusion of unending stairs.

All at once his surroundings rippled and changed, and he found himself on a ledge on the cliff, with no more steps leading up to the castle, but the entrance to a dim cavern in front of him. His grey vision meant he could see no more than a few steps ahead of himself, even after a muttered “Lumos,” but Cormac entered the cave anyways, finding it to be narrow and with a distinct upwards slope.

He walked through the cavern perhaps a quarter of an hour before it opened once more, this time onto what had once been a solid, iron gate but was now a pair of rusted iron bars attached to two hinges. McLaggen pushed it open with a charm, unwilling to risk touching the metal, and entered a passage which resembled the dungeons of Hogwarts more than anything, though it ended in a wall and did not seem to lead anywhere.

Cormac stared at the offending wall, trying to examine the bricks as best he could with his limited vision to no avail. Gritting his teeth, he gingerly reached one hand to touch the wall, braced for any number of traps to activate, but when nothing happened, he began to run his fingers over all of the bricks, putting his wand between his teeth so he could use both hands.

Finally, his left hand stilled on one brick which seemed smoother and more polished than the others. Wand once more gripped firmly in his right hand, he laid the tip of the wand on the brick. Instantly, the rush of an ancient spell which had long lain dormant told him he had been correct - the bricks melted away as though they had never been and the passage continued onto a staircase, leading up to a true dungeon hallway, full of old cells. Some of the cells, Cormac noted absently, had Inferi in them.

He continued through the dungeon, searching for a way upwards and out of the dungeons, though the higher he rose in the castle, the more tense the air felt, and the more Inferi he saw roaming the halls. Most, to his amusement,were reindeer.

“Alright, c’mon, think, Cormac,” he said to himself after yet again stumbling upon an empty room with no sign of any magical battle, swords or keystones of enchantments save undead reindeer. “If you were an asshole pureblood who just murdered your daughter and were on your way to kill her husband where would you be?”

He stood for a few moments, trying to think of possible locations - by his watch he had spent a little more than three hours already, and the castle seemed to grow colder and less welcoming with every passing moment. 

Cormac’s thoughts were interrupted by a woman’s shout and anguished sobbing, followed by the appearance of a wailing woman floating through the wall. Though Cormac’s vision was still limited to shades of grey, for some reason he saw the woman in full colour, as she had been in life, down to the blood staining the front of her gown. 

The woman saw him through her tears, and floated up to him. She began to speak, but her words were in Russian so Cormac held out his hands, palms upwards, and shrugged, attempting to communicate that he did not speak Russian. The ghost took his hands and passed through him, and suddenly he found himself able to understand her words. 

“Who art thou, o stranger that walketh the halls of my family? Whence comest thou, and what for?” the ghost asked him. “How hast thou come, living yet shrouded in Death? Dost thou seek my father’s knowledge, to break the curse some vile sorcerer has cast upon thee? Or art thou a Speaker of some skill, to pass thusly between the worlds?”

“I am called Cormac, of the Clan McLaggen which lives in Éire,” he replied formally. After all, who knew how she would respond to modern speech, he reasoned. “I am a breaker of spells and enchantments, and have come here to lift the curse which lies upon the isle.”

“Speakest thou of the curse which binds the inhabitants of this isle in eternal undeath?” the ghost asked, and she sounded hopeful for a moment. “It binds not me, but I shall not pass beyond the veil before these souls may rest as well.”

“Er, no, actually,” Cormac told her, forgetting that it might be better to speak in a more formal and antiquated way in his excitement at having perhaps found someone who might help him find what he was seeking. “There’s an enchantment which prevents the island’s rightful owners from stepping foot on it, and I’m here to break that because, y’know, the bills don’t pay themselves.”

“Who claims to own this land by right?” the ghost cried, and her voice echoed oddly in the hall.

“Uh, the Bessmertny family? There’s a whole family, they’re like, descended from this guy, Koschei,” he began to say, but at the word ‘Koschei’ the ghost let out an angry shriek and her hands began to turn clawlike, and he promptly decided to stop speaking before the ghostly woman got even angrier.

“Thou hast come to further the will of my father, for none of the family are of the proper blood to break the spell cast by my beloved!” she shouted, and Cormac realized that this must be Marya Morevna.  
“No quarter shalt thou find here, and every spirit on this isle will see thee as an enemy,” Marya proclaimed, and then, grabbing Cormac’s shirt with one clawed hand, she raked the other across his face, drawing blood. “I rend from thee the veil which shrouds thee from the eyes of those who neither live nor die, craven. Wouldst thou break my lover’s spell, thou wilt be forced to break my father’s also!”

Cormac was too shocked by the room suddenly appearing, not in shades of grey, but in colour, with the darker grey blurs he had seen earlier resolving themselves into patches of green moss, to notice that the ghost had disappeared. Something nudged at his leg from behind, and he froze, turning his head to look at a reindeer Inferius which was in the process of deciding whether or not Cormac would make a good meal. 

“Oh, fuck…” Cormac muttered, biting his lip, and raising one hand to wipe the blood dripping down his face from the scratches the ghost had left. The motion caused several drops to fall on the floor, and as if scenting them, the reindeer’s head rose. Though it had been decaying slowly for several hundred years, Cormac swore that at that moment, the reindeer looked at him with empty eye sockets and a predatory gaze that had no place anywhere on a herbivorous animal.

What followed was a mad chase through the castle’s winding halls, with Cormac taking every turn he saw, and every staircase, in a mostly fruitless attempt to shake the pursuing reindeer. It seemed that for every room and corridor he passed, the herd of undead reindeer and occasional humans chasing him only grew.

He found himself in a hall fronted by large doors, and with a shouted “Alohamora!” Cormac sprinted out into the castle’s walled courtyard, exhausted and ready to make a final, desperate stand against the pursuing horde. The courtyard, empty but for a large bush growing in between several cracked tiles, and a crumbling well, seemed as good a place as any for a final assault against the Inferi, and Cormac gathered his breath and began casting fire spells as the Inferi poured out of the castle in a seemingly endless tide. 

The edge of one flame whip caught the bush growing in the courtyard, burning it away, and Cormac saw a glint of something metallic, before an Inferius shambled forward and blocked it from his view. Continuing his assault on the Inferi, he slowly made his way over to the bush, and saw that it had grown over the remains of a person. The glint of metal he had seen was a surprisingly well preserved sword. It had been thrust deeply into the ground at an angle that suggested that it had, at one point, also passed through the person whose remains now rested on the courtyard’s tiles. 

Instinct, and a lingering childhood dream of being King Arthur, made Cormac’s left hand close on the sword’s hilt. The moment he did so, the Inferi froze in place, and Cormac had the sudden awareness that he could command them to do whatever he chose, and they would obey. 

“Die!” he shouted, tugging the sword free and brandishing it in the air one-handed. As if it had been that simple all along, he heard the unearthly sound of hundreds of bones falling to the floor, no longer held together or animated by spirits denied their rest.

It was, all things considered, rather anticlimactic, Cormac felt, lowering his left arm as he began to feel the strain of holding a sword in the air. And then the ghost of Marya Morevna returned, a look of grudging approval on her face. 

She gave him a grateful nod and pointed at the well, then swept her skirts up, took a single step forward, and vanished. With her disappearance, the remnants of the Inferi crumbled into dust, and were swept up by a sudden and extremely cold wind.

“That wasn’t subtle at all,” he grumbled, transferring his wand to his left hand and the sword to his right before walking towards the well. Though in poor condition, it was topped by a single large stone which blocked the well and prevented its use. The covering stone had an inscription in it, though Cormac didn’t have the slightest clue what it said. “Well, when in doubt, enchanted sword, meet stone…” he mused aloud, returning his wand to its holster in his right sleeve before gripping the sword with both hands, raising it in the air and bringing it down on the stone with all his might.

The stone shattered with a thunderous crack, and it felt as though the air changed, became lighter, a sensation Cormac had always associated with old curses lifting. Relieved, he sank down to the ground, resting his back against the well.

He didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he opened his eyes next, the sun was setting and according to his watch he had five minutes to return to the dock. He looked around for the sword, shrank it to the size of a dagger and shoved it into his belt pouch, then did another sweep of the courtyard, seeing if there was anything else worthy of taking home as a memento of the trip.

Finding nothing that met his standards, he got to his feet and focused on Apparating to the dock and the tiny boat waiting there.

The tiny Russian woman looked at him with disappointment in her eyes. “I was hoping you would not return,” she sniffed. “Not for the money, it is no issue. I simply did not want to hear your voice on the return voyage.”

Cormac rolled his eyes and gave her a wink. “Don’t lie to me, doll, you like the way I--”

“I warned you not to speak to me so disrespectfully,” Vasilisa smirked.

Tongue magically glued to the roof of his mouth, Cormac could only nod mournfully.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cormac drinks vodka with a Russian and makes a significant contribution to British Wizarding archaeology.

Despite Vasilisa’s earlier threats, the tongue gluing wasn’t permanent, so Cormac was counting that as a win. They reached the mainland, a much shorter journey now that there was no threat of Inferi in the water to stop them from using magic to speed the trip, and got out of the boat, breath steaming in the air.

Vasilisa reached into one of her pockets and then cupped whatever object she found there in both hands, softly crooning several words to it before making an upward tossing motion and letting whatever it was go. Whatever it was turned out to be a carved bird made of some pale wood, rapidly growing in size until it settled at the size of a carriage.

“Come,” Vasilisa said imperiously, seating herself atop the bird, and Cormac didn’t ask questions but did as ordered, well aware that the woman could and absolutely would leave him to freeze on some cold, rocky shore if he didn’t move quickly enough for her tastes.

The bird took off, and they began to fly to some unspecified location, not speaking until the quiet and the cold became too much for Cormac to bear. “This is a pretty nice ride,” he began in an attempt to start a conversation.

“Yes. Our dacha is warded against visitors coming by portkey or apparition. Only a Pomor dove carved by someone of the blood may grant entry to a guest.”

Cormac blinked. “I take it you don’t have many people coming over, then.”

“The last visitor who came uninvited to our lands turned an entire island into Inferi.”

“Fair enough,” he replied, though he couldn’t help but feel that they had bloody deserved it. Further attempts at making conversation fell similarly flat, and Cormac resigned himself to a silent flight.

They landed in what appeared to be an empty field shortly after he had given up on attempting to engage Vasilisa in witty repartee, and the moment they both dismounted from the bird it caught fire and quickly reduced itself to ash. “Prevents stowaways and tracking magics,” Vasilisa said simply when she caught his shocked look.

Merlin, but he was never going to understand these Russians. “Are we waiting for something, then?”

“I wanted to see how long you would stand here gaping like an idiot staring at an empty field,” his companion replied with a decisive nod. “Longer than I expected.” She sounded like she was trying to hold back laughter. “Bow to the cat, Englishman,” she ordered.

“What?” But there was indeed a blue-gray cat, sitting in front of the two of them. He bowed. The cat gave Cormac a long look, and then let out what he could only describe as an incredibly judgemental-sounding mew. Amazing. Even their cats were insulting. Bloody Russians.

Vasilisa said something to the cat in Russian, and then cat sniffed, almost disdainfully, turned, and walked away. The air rippled as it passed, revealing a large villa made of intricately carved wood. Impressed despite himself, Cormac let out a whistle, earning a disgusted look from Vasilisa and the cat.

“The history of this place is wasted on you, I’m sure, so I won’t even bother,” Vasilisa told him as she led him inside. “You can keep your shoes on, you won’t be here very long,” she added while removing her own and putting on a pair of embroidered slippers.

Cormac’s eyes narrowed and he reached instinctively for his wand. “Is that meant to be a threat?”

Vasilisa looked at him like he was a particularly stupid child. “No, it’s a statement of fact. You will only be here long enough for my father to acknowledge your aid, pay you as agreed, and leave. Relax. No harm will come to you here at my family’s hands.”

Still leery despite the reassurance, Cormac followed her into a room dominated by a large hearth on one end, where a man he assumed to be his contracted employer, Gvidon Bessmertny, stood waiting beside a small table. “So,” the man spoke suddenly after a few seconds of staring intently at Cormac and Vasilisa while Cormac tried to look anywhere that wasn’t the impressive array of tattoos on the man’s chest. “You survive.” He gave Cormac a nod of grudging respect. “Is good work. Sit.”

What was it with these Russians and ordering him around? Cormac sat. He wasn’t about to argue with a shirtless, tattoo-covered Russian man built like a bear in his own house. He might be a reckless Gryffindor, but he was far from stupid.

Vasilisa murmured something in Russian to her father, and the man nodded, making a shoo-ing gesture. “Goodbye, Englishman. I hope we never meet again.” Gvidon chuckled at her words.

“I’m actually Irish,” Cormac called at her departing form, lacking a better response. Gvidon snorted, but his daughter either didn’t hear or chose not to acknowledge him.

“Do you drink, Mister McLaggen?” His host didn’t wait for a response, pouring a clear liquid into two glasses on the table that instantly covered in frost. When he passed Cormac a glass he couldn’t help but notice that what he had assumed were rings on the man’s hands were actually tattoos. “Na zdorovye, to health,” the older man toasted, raising his glass.

“To health,” Cormac echoed, deciding to forego the attempt at repeating the Russian. They touched glasses and he drank down the shot just as his host did. He reached for a pickle to follow the alcohol but the Russian stopped him by putting his newly refilled glass in his hand.

“Second toast, is guest’s toast for host, and then we eat.”

“To you, then,” Cormac responded, glass raised. Again Bessmertny lightly tapped his glass against Cormac’s before drinking. This time, his host reached for a slice of bread and some meat on the table, so Cormac followed his lead and bit into a pickle to chase down the freezing alcohol, then began to examine the various dishes laid out on the table.

Gvidon watched him with the sort of amusement one reserved for watching a struggling toddler, or particularly stupid dog, before explaining the spread. “Pickled vegetables: tomato, cucumber, beet, cabbage. Herring. Sprats. Bread, cheese, cut meat, sausage, salo.”  
Cormac made a questioning noise.  
“Like fat,” he pronounced after a moment of thinking how to explain it. “Is good. Eat with bread.” He nodded and continued. “Butter and caviar, also for bread. Olivier salad, kholodets - like jelly but meat.”  
Cormac made a personal note to avoid the meat jelly. Gvidon made a gesture encompassing the entire table, saying, “Is called zakuski. Traditional food to eat with drinking. Tradition to drink when finishing business.”

“I get the sense that you’re big on tradition here, Mister Bessmertny,” Cormac said as his host filled their glasses once more.

“Some traditions more than others,” the man agreed, raising his third glass in a toast. “To tradition!” They touched glasses. “This, also tradition,” Bessmertny nodded. “In past, it was… Not respectful, checking poison. So we touch glasses, some of my drink spill to your glass, some of your to my, and if one of us poisons, everyone is poisoned.”

“I don’t think you are the type of man to poison a business associate,” Cormac offered, not meeting the man’s gaze on the off-chance the Russian was a legilimens who would see that he was in fact thinking the opposite. “You seem too honorable for that.”

Gvidon laughed. “You see this?” He pointed to a tattoo on his left shoulder.  
In the dim lighting of the room and the crackling firelight Cormac could make out two figures, a robed woman holding a swaddled child, framed by the sort of shape Cormac had seen on several churches in Russia. “Holy Mother and Child. To my friends I am clean.”  
Gvidon pointed to a matching tattoo on his right shoulder, almost identical save for the fact that this one was magical and featured two robed, seated women. One of their faces was incredibly familiar. “My wife and daughter. For family I will do anything.”

“I might not have been in Hufflepuff, but I know a thing or two about loyalty.”

The Russian ignored him. “I am a dangerous man, Mister McLaggen,” he said, leaning in closer. “These tattoo, not for fun. Your men in Azkaban, they have also, da? Like poison mushroom, is warning. I can be strong ally, or worst enemy. Terrible enemy. No rest, even in death.” Gvidon smirked. “Our Holy Father gave to us magic of resurrection, when He brought back his Son. Maybe kholopstvo, how you say peasants, think is unclean force, but we know better.”

“I’m not sure why you’re telling me this,” Cormac said, trying to mask his sudden discomfort by constructing a sandwich out of meat, cheese, pickled cabbage and the thickly sliced black bread on the table.

“It is a warning, Mister McLaggen. You have done for my family a big service. For this I thank you. I do not trust lightly. You are first mix-blood who will leave this place alive in, I don’t know how many years. Not since my father’s father, certainly. Do not betray my trust. For your sake.” Bessmertny gave him a smile that was somehow threatening at the same time. “But you seem an honorable man, Mister McLaggen,” he echoed Cormac’s earlier words. “It was good to do business with you. No, no, don’t rise yet, first we finish bottle, then you go.”

“And my payment?” He half expected to be told his payment was his life, to be honest, but the rent didn’t pay itself, after all.

“First half Vasilisa gave you when you sign contract, da?” Cormac made a noise of assent. “Second half, and extra bonus, she transferred to your account when we start eating. Smart girl, my daughter,” he added boastfully.

“Bloody gorgeous, too…” The words slipped out before he could consider whom he was speaking to.

“This also, da,” Gvidon agreed, and a hint of the former threat crept into his voice as he continued speaking, “but not for you, Mister McLaggen. Not for you.”

Cormac didn’t really have a good answer to that, so he pretended to be extremely engrossed in buttering a slice of bread and spreading caviar on it instead. It was actually pretty good, despite the strangeness of the combination.

His host finished pouring the remaining vodka into their glasses and placed the empty bottle under the table. “Na pososhok. A final drink for the departing guest.”

Well that didn’t sound bloody ominous whatsoever. Cormac raised his glass, meeting Bessmertny’s gaze with a cheerful grin. “Thank you for your hospitality. You have a beautiful home.” And daughter. And oh, fuck, they were still making eye contact. Cormac looked away, flushing red. From drink, obviously, he wasn’t an embarrassed fourth year caught in a broom closet. Maybe Bessmertny wasn’t a Legilimens and hadn’t caught that thought? He clung to the shred of hope.

“I begin to think you have overstayed your welcome,” Bessmertny replied, nostrils narrowing in anger. Well shit, seemed the man did know some Legilimency after all. Cormac drank his vodka quickly to have an excuse to remain silent. “It was good to work with you, Mister McLaggen,” he repeated after downing his own glass. “Perhaps we will work again together some time.”  
He took the plate with the remaining sliced meat from the table, ladled a spoonful of Olivier salad and a selection of pickles onto it, and added a piece of buttered bread with caviar and stood, walking towards the hearth, where the blue-grey cat from earlier had curled up on the mantle. Hearing the sound of a plate being placed near it, the cat looked up curiously, whereupon it proceeded to turn into an elderly man with horns, albeit no larger than the cat it had been. "For you, Domovoy," Bessmertny told him, "for safe passage for our guest," and the little man nodded regally before continuing to eat the buttered bread.

Bessmertny held out a painted wooden pot full of Floo powder to a Cormac who was significantly more wobblier than the Cormac who had entered the house, four shots of vodka ago.  
“Ride the fires to Tsarskiy Dvor. Is like your Ministry’s atrium. From there you can make way home.”

Cormac repeated the strange name several times before taking a pinch of Floo powder and entering the fireplace.

\---

The rest of the trip home was a familiar whirlwind of Floos, Portkeys and Apparition, and then the short walk up to his flat. Cormac collapsed onto his sofa feeling exhausted, giddy and maybe a little drunk, and took off his boots and belt, and then his shirt. He removed the shrunken sword from his belt pouch, and a chunk of antler that must have fallen in at some point tumbled out along with it. Unshrinking the sword, Cormac put it and the antler on his coffee table and just stared, in awe of his good fortune.

One of the most terrifying men in Russia, a Legilimens to boot, and he hadn’t even so much as suspected that Cormac might have smuggled out one of his own family’s precious artifacts under his nose. This called for a celebration in Cormac’s book. Something more fun than just another drink.

He headed to his bedroom to get his smoking kit, and stopped dead in the doorway at the sight that confronted him. “What the actual fuck?” There was no way he’d gotten so drunk he was hallucinating things. He knew his tolerance better than that, didn’t he?

“Such language,” the whatever it was responded in a voice that was both buzzing and echoing, but also gave the impression that the speaker was female and distinctly unimpressed with what she saw. “Really now...”

“Who… How did you get in here? This place is warded from top to bottom with some damn good wards! I’m a cursebreaker, I should know!” The figure remained silent. “I… I am Wizarding Britain’s premier magical archaeologist, how very dare you trespass like this?!”

The buzzing drone that had filled the room seemed to grow angrier and colder. “You call yourself an _archaeologist_?” The figure hissed, clearly incensed.  
“ _You_? Tomb raider! Treasure hunter! Glory seeker! You haven’t spent so much as a _minute_ of your life doing research or documenting your finds since you left school! You trigger curses and destroy historical evidence that we _could_ be studying at the Department, if you would just be less of a _Gryffindor_! Your pea-sized brain couldn’t even _begin_ to _imagine_ the things we could learn, if you only just left the sites you visited _intact_!”  
The more they spoke, the more enraged they sounded, floating upwards and looming menacingly over Cormac’s face, resembling nothing so much as a Dementor with a leather fox mask for its head.  
“Hand it over!” The figure commanded, and an oddly solid shadowy tendril of… something… prodded Cormac in the chest. “Now! I am out of patience with you, McLaggen!”

Aw, fuck. It seemed that the Department of Mysteries had finally caught up to him. “Hand what over?” He tried to hedge.

“What you took from that island, thief,” the Unspeakable taunted.

“It’s in the living room, I, let me just,” he began, planning on handing over the antler and claiming the sword had been in his possession all along, but the Unspeakable swept past, well, through, him and into the living room, and he could only follow and look on sadly as tendrils picked up sword and antler and hid them within the shadowy mass that appeared to make up the figure’s torso.

“The Department will be taking these now,” the Unspeakable informed him, buzzing and echoing almost entirely absent, though all he managed to discern from that was that the speaker was female and had the most posh accent he’d ever heard. “Thank you for your contributions to Wizarding British archaeology,” she added mockingly and promptly vanished.

“Posh cunts will be the death of me,” Cormac groaned, falling dramatically onto his bed.

Well, at least he had money to cover the rent, and that was something too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On Russian culture, magic, and witches and wizards from Russia in Rowling’s world:
> 
> Russian folklore has strong traditions of good confronting evil, the simple son and the orphaned daughter slaying the witch Baba Yaga and the dragon Zmey Gorinich, with the powers of purity and good intentions overcoming black magic and unclean strength, if not at once then certainly on the third try.  
> But Russian culture is also intensely superstitious - never make your bed before an exam, or celebrate a birthday before it’s happened, or give an empty wallet as a gift - and perpetually entranced by the supernatural and mystical - whether consulting psychics about personal issues, or determining romantic compatibility with astrology, seeking out mystics and healers like Baba Vanga.  
> The unclean forces are out there, and one can never have too many safety pins pinned on one’s coat collar to avoid the evil eye, but so too are people given otherworldly powers for the sake of helping the everyday man and woman, according to superstition and folk belief. 
> 
> My interpretation of Russian magical culture suggests that, in Tsarist and pre-Tsarist Russia, wizards were seen as just another type of warlord, conquering by wand instead of by sword and horse.  
> Thus, Gvidon refers to the non-magical as “kholopstvo,” a term from Feudal Russia roughly equating to landless, rightless serfs, barely better than slaves, a decision that (I hope) shows his disdain, entitlement and distance from the non-magical, much like a feudal warlord would have felt disdain and encouraged distance between himself and his enslaved in all but name subjects.
> 
> But the Communist Revolution strongly shaped the Russian character in many ways, and I think that it was also a turning point for the Russian wizarding society.
> 
> In my interpretation, under Soviet rule, magical Russia is still an empire, still ruled by a Tsar and his court, still governed by intrigues and power games and money, where the purebloods are an entrenched nobility and the muggleborns, while more in number, cannot risk rocking the boat too much for fear of drawing the attention of the Soviet authorities to their selves and their families.  
> Among the non-magical, stories from Tsarist Russia and earlier times become merely stories, and we see Soviet-era names like Stalina, Radiy (radium, in Russian), Marlen/a (Marx Lenin) gain popularity among the more mundane Dimitriys and Tatianas, but magical Russia is still, in many ways, stuck in the days of fairy tales, recycling names of heroes (Tsar Gvidon, Vasilisa Prekrasnaya) and villains (Koschei Bessmertny) for their children.
> 
> But Soviet Russia gives the Wizarding Tsar a new weapon in his arsenal: the gulag, or detention camp, usually in remote Northern wastes, for political dissidents and criminals.  
> This, and the photo of Sirius Black in Azkaban, tattooed and wild, is where the idea of Gvidon Bessmertny was born: a man from an ostensibly privileged background who finds himself somehow imprisoned with dissidents and thieves, and perhaps he wasn’t a thief but merely a dissident before he was jailed the first time, but he is certainly a thief as well by the time he finishes his first sentence, and his criminality is indisputable by the time he has his shoulders and hands tattooed (prison tattoos, in Russian organized crime, have fascinating meanings… I'm no artist, but I've got a full sketch of Gvidon's tattoos as I imagine them stashed somewhere...)
> 
> On vodka and drinking:
> 
> Drinking culture, in Russia, has a lot of rules and traditions, from the order of toasts to the side dishes to circumstances that necessitate drinking. In my depiction I did my best to be as accurate to what that looks like, but it's been a few months since Noviy God, so maybe I missed a few things.
> 
> On archaeology:
> 
> To call Indiana Jones (as depicted in the film franchise) an archaeologist is like calling a child with a water gun a firefighter. It's just wrong. Archaeology is methodical research and excavation work, documentation, preservation, and above all, respect for the culture you are studying, not bounding into an ancient temple, recklessly breaking stuff, almost falling into a pit, avoiding some spikes and taking some relics home to put into a museum. (That second part? With the spikes and the relics? We call that looting. Or tomb-robbing. Or... you get it.)
> 
> Don't be like Indy. Or Cormac. Please.


End file.
